That isn’t just a catcher. That is a C/2B/3B/LF/CF/P who has more home runs than he has strikeouts and walks combined. Willians Astudillo is and has always been your favourite player even if you’ve never heard of him before now. 

That sort of frustration isn’t unusual for top-level athletes, and yeah...there’s something of a pattern there. When she was penalized for threatening a line official, she was a couple points away from being upset by Kim Clijsters. Her 2011 blow-up came while she was losing to Sam Stosur. She’s a fantastic player, but…

Open-wheeled cars absolutely should not be racing on speedways. And I disagree that it’ll take the death of an important person dying; important people have already died or been maimed. Dan Wheldon had won a title, and the Indy 500 twice; didn’t matter. Alex Zanardi was one of the most prominent drivers in CART; fans…

The spin rate makes the moving 91mph change-up substantially better. A high-spin fastball has less drop, and a very high-spin fastball will look like it’s rising. Not only does that tend to get more swings and misses, because it follows a different path than a fastball normally would, but it differentiates it in a big…

Open-wheeled cars do not belong on ovals (or ovoid triangles, or whatever). 

I was jogging to get to a friend’s vehicle (well, their mother’s minivan) when 18ish, and rather than cease jogging when the moment for jogging had passed, I opted to jump into the van at a decent clip. Why this idea struck me, I have no idea, but no ideas struck me for some time thereafter, because I struck my head…

Never had that conversation with my father. Now, my mother found out because, having driven me to the ER after I suffered a concussion and while we were waiting to hear whether I’d need to remain overnight for observation, she thought it was the right moment to ask whether my girlfriend and I were intimate. Taking…

It’s very simple: in sports, we will forgive transgressions against women, against children, crimes even of pretty extreme violence, because they do not affect your ability to do sports. We will not forgive transgressions against the sport itself, even minor ones. Similarly, your redemption is not found in admitting…

Make proper hot dog stock. Boil a package of hot dogs at great length along with, I dunno, some store-bought dry onion soup mix or something, and then use that as the base for a soup. The fancier and more incongruous the intended end product, the better.

It was lampshaded previously: no one cares about the native American narratives. He was in a peripheral narrative; the updates happened when the hosts were killed, and the stories that would have led him to be killed were explored so infrequently that he went nine years without dying.

That’s easily the best episode of Westworld to date. It’s been so eager to rush from plot point to plot point, but here it spent an entire hour building out a single — important — connection. Infinitely better than the dumb cliffhangers preceding it.

Drunkenly play-fighting with a friend. They had tripped me and had me in a headlock or some such from behind. I got the brilliant idea to try to knee him over my shoulder. I did not knee him over my shoulder. I am not even remotely close to having the flexibility to pull that off. Instead, I kneed myself extremely…

For what it’s worth, Wilton — the lesser Guerrero brother that tutored Vlad II — wants him to remain in the minors for most or all of this season. People with houses within a quarter-mile of Northeast Delta Dental Stadium (!) may differ, however.

When I was in my late teens/early 20s, I had a 1992 Mazda MX-6. Mechanically, that thing could have gone forever. In 3-4 years, I don’t think that I spent a cent on anything but the most basic maintenance (and often not there; it turns out that an MX-6 on bald summer tires will struggle in a snowstorm).

Wario put all of his money in Bitcoin when it was at $17,000 USD:1 BTC.

How many years thereafter was it before the police unearthed the first body in their back yard.

The Detroit News brought it to light. Deadspin reported on that, and is reporting on the fact that the Lions claim that they had no idea, which in turn suggests that they did only the most cursory of background searches into the guy who is effectively the public face of their billion-dollar company. That’s news!

Well, this sucks. Having read your work here and on BP, I hope that SI lets you continue to do really high-quality if niche baseball stuff, as you’re a damned good researcher and writer; your Statcast article in particular was stellar.

He’s a better pitcher than his ERA suggests; giving up a bit too much hard contact, but his SIERA (a fielding-independent measure of pitcher skill) is top-25 in the majors right now, and he’s generating a tonne of swings and misses. He probably ends up being a better starter than a DH, so long as his elbow doesn’t…

In fairness, the previous obscenely-wealthy owner made an enormous sum off its rise, and sold Gao a club whose neglect began (but wasn’t yet fully evident) long before he showed up on the scene.